Eggs

Look at Sheila waiting quietly for her dinner while Poppy stomps about shrieking through all the dishes, making it impossible for me to retrieve them. Usually I have all the bowls out of their area before dinner time, but yesterday I forced myself to go to the supermarket and buy fresh vegetables and was late home.

The man at the check-out said: Are you making a big vegetable soup? I said, no, most of this is for my pig. She is a very special pig we want her to live a long time so she eats lots of fruit and vegetables.  Is she a miniature pig? He asked. No, I said, as I rummaged about in my handbag looking for a pen,  she is about 600 pounds. He blinked, then went back to packing my bags.

No kitten shots today, by the time I got home at 3pm there was no real light coming through the windows at all. The light is heavy as lead.

All six of the kittens are eating their solids very well. Eating and drinking from bowls.  Climbing the furniture, playing with anything they can find, balancing on the firewood pile next to the woodstove,  sleeping where they fall like little burrs along Boos back and one always under his chin.  By my reckoning they should be nearing their 6 week birthdays, which means off to the vet for their worming, health checks etc.  And Marmalade goes in for her operation.

Tomorrow I set up a new water arrangement for the calves across the way at the West barn. There is a water fountain for the stock  there but the gasket has gone in its centre and it is leaking badly, and as you know, in this environment any leaking water immediately becomes ice. A sheet of ice under cattle is very dangerous. So tomorrow I will set up a trough with a water heater in it to kee it from freezing solid and I will trace the line back to the house and turn the water fountain off.  Hopefully we can fix it in the summer.  Till then I will fill the trough with a hose, just like I do here at the home barn.

Also tomorrow I bring the ten Rhode Island Reds home.  (layers) They hatched in the autumn and have been growing at Jakes – safe from the Bastard Mink.  He will keep  some for his own flock. This will bring my flock of big birds back up to a reasonable number and they will be all start laying again in March probably.

Good morning. This reminds me of  a story one of my house guests told me at Thanksgiving. She grew up in post war Germany. Her birthday is in January. She distinctly remembers when she was a child wanting an egg for her birthday.  Not necessarily because of the food shortages, though food was scarce,   they lived in a town,  but because in those days chickens were not put under lights to force them to lay in the winter, usually a chook will rest in the short winter days, not laying through lack of light,  so eggs were simply out of season in January.  It was highy unusual to see eggs for sale in her town in the winter.

Interesting how our modern world seems so normal to us but the diverse largesse at our tables is a comparitively new thing.  Lucky for me and the pigs I am still getting about six eggs a day though as we near the shortest day even this number is dwindling and then we also will do without eggs until the light returns.

I hope you have a lovely day.

Love your friend on the farm,

celi

c